Delays, delays, and more delays

We have seen many delays occur over the past few years due to the COVID 19 pandemic that struck in 2020.  

When the pandemic initially hit there were delays with nearly everything.  Panini even made a toilet paper parallel in 2021 Optic to aknowledge the craziness that occurred. 

We continue to see shipping delays occur two years later.  

In the past few months of 2022 we have seen Topps finally distribute two products originally intended for 2021.

Up first is the 2021 Big League Baseball

This product was originally scheduled prior to the All Star Break 2021, but kept getting delayed until it finally came out in the late winter months of 2022.

I've collected most of this rainbow by getting the base, rainbow foil, blue, and orange.  There is a black parallel /15 that I just won an auction for coming my way eventually. 

It is odd to see 2022 cards feature Cutch in a Phillies uniform and I've discussed my disdain for that already. I am a sucker for these kid friendly products like Big League Baseball though.  I will definitely try to get the 1/1 red foil and the /25 blue foil.

2021 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary is another recent product released that had an original street date prior to the end of 2021.

Former Miguel Cabrera and hobby shop owner, JT of TripleCrown24 sold me these two cards.  Visit his eBay store here.

This set is loaded with many parallels with lots of shiny refractors to collect.  The set features current and former stars on the 1952 set.  It is a 700 card set and features 14 different parallels to chase.  When the set was initially released it had 33 parallels announced. 

Have you purchased cards of either of these set releases this year?

What non cardboard shipping delays are you aware of still going on?

Back in Black

One of my 2021 Goals is to add 50 NEW Cutch cards to the collection from his Pirates playing days (2005-2017).  That equates to roughly 1 new pre 2018 Cutch card each week.  I have been (barely) keeping pace with that strategy for much of this year.

The card you see below was my first purchase of 2021.  Because it was shipped via PWE there was no tracking on it and it took almost 9 weeks to be delivered.

This 2014 Topps Finest Black Refractor is Numbered 42/99.  I have a love/hate relationship with 2014 Topps Finest.  I both love and hate the design. 

Fun fact: Cutch hit a 5th walk-off homer for the Pirates in 2015. 

I can finally leave feedback for this January 1st purchase.

What is the longest you have had to wait for a card to arrive during this crazy times we are living in now?

The Other Karate Kid

As many of you know, I used to be a huge comic book nerd during the early 2000s.  One day soon, I may tell the true origin of Collecting Cutch and how it relates to a superhero story.  Time will tell.

In my time of collecting comic books there were three collections that I "super collected" and had near complete runs for: Daredevil, Gambit/X-Men, and The Flash.  The collection that I was closest to being complete was Daredevil.  I had every issue created except for 1-5, 8, and 10.  Nearly an entire run dating back to the Silver Age of comic books.  

I sold the entire collection when Daredevil had hit movie theatres and doubled my money, but had I held onto many of those books in today's market I would probably be looking at close to $10K for the collection with the grades they were in.  

The reason I liked Daredevil so much was that he was fearless.  

Like most things in the printing world, there are the writers and editors that bring these fabled stories to life.  

Long before Ralph Macchio was a known actor and star of the Karate Kid franchise, there was another Ralph Macchio that was editing for Marvel Comics.  This Ralph Macchio would be nicknamed by comic writers and artists Karate Kid, a play on his name.

Ralph Macchio, the Marvel Comics editor, was known for his extended run on Daredevil and Spider-Man that began in the 80s and went through the early 2000s.  The editor also helped launched The Ultimates comic line which helped to inspire the entire MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe).  The Marvel Movies owe a great deal of homage to Ralph Macchio, especially Spider-Man.  Even the Netflix Daredevil show would not have been possible without Macchio's editing and pushing through some stories.

So today I am showing my own homage to The Other Karate Kid by showcasing some recent McCutchen cards.  These cards all highlight Cutch catching flies like Spider-Man catches thieves.  (There's a sing that could be written along them lines, I just know it.)

Above are the 2020 Topps Stadium Club Chrome 

red logo parallel (5/5), refractor

xfractor, wave refractor

Continuing the theme of catching flies is my near complete rainbow of the 2020 Topps Gold Label Class 1 (fielding photo).  I have the Gold (1/1), base, black, and red (/75)

I still need the blue which is numbered to 150 copies.

Much like karate lessons (or class) there are different colors to strive for (Topps parallels).  

Go watch Karate Kid then watch Cobra Kai!!! 

Cobra Kai is currently streaming on Netflix.  It directly follows up where the 1984 movie Karate Kid left off.  The series shows a Johnny Lawrence (blonde kid and defending champ in Karate Kid) down on his luck and struggling to,get through life.  It plays up how that crane kick (which may have been an illegal move) by Daniel Larusso (played by Ralph Macchio) changed both their lives forever.  Larusso now owns one of the most recognizable car dealerships in California and they kick the competition prices, while Lawrence can barely make rent.

Lawrence sees a young teenager get assaulted by a bunch of bullies and comes to his aid by doing karate on them.  He eventually opens up his own karate studio named after his former training dojo, Cobra Kai.  

Over the course of the first three seasons many familar faces (including the beautiful Elizabeth Shue) eventually make guest appearances and there are many similarities to the way Lawrence trains Miguel to the way Larusso learned under Mr. Miyagi.  

The cast is fun and the storyline, while simple, is entertaining.  I highly suggest for anyone with access to a Netflix account to watch it. 

Hopefully it brings back some 80s nostalgia along the way.

"Silver" Savings

With the Black Friday madness (or lack there of) behind us, I can get back to reporting about my collection additions big and small.

I know with a collection of over 3,000 unique cards of a single player the obvious reaction is likely one of these scenarios "I didn't know he had that many cards" or "You must have every card made".  

Both above statements are very false assumptions.  Andrew McCutchen has 6,254 unique cards according to TCDB.  If I ever actually spend the time to complete my checklists on their website I would have only roughly half of the produced cards of my main player collection.  To put into perspective, Mike Trout has over 14K cards and Fernando Tatis Jr has over 4K cards already.  

I am very content with my player selection and with each new card I add to my collection that adds roughly a hundredth (yes 0.01%) to the percentage owned.  

Simple math lesson, I need to add 62 new unique cards to the collection to make a 1% increase to the number of cards I own vs the cards produced.  

There are cards though that become available that I get really excited to add to the collection.

This is one of them.

Not only did I purchase it with a winning bid of only 49 cents, it also helps cross off a format of cards that I always covet when making my McCutchen purchases.

Shiny refractor ✔

Dreadlock era Cutch ✔

Pirates uniform ✔

Cards identifying his MVP season ✔

In the football and basketball world, Prizm silvers are the kings of collecting.  They are the equivalent to Topps Chrome Refractors, but with some amazing etching on the cards as well as some shine that really pops.  

Here they are side by side on the scanner, which never captures the refractor quality very well.

And here they are with a phone flash.

I can't take pictures of Refractors very well and my scanner does them ZERO justice.

What tips do you have for showing off the shine of those Refractor and Prizm cards?

Cardboard Insider: What became of Wendell?

I wish I could properly celebrate National Cereal Day with all of you, but alas there is a mystery we must aknowledge of having never been solved.

While there have been many cereals that have come and gone over the years and many of their cereal mascots have left along the way too, there are some cereals who just did away with their mascots without much explanation.

On this National Cereal Day we are going to look at the disappearance of the three bakers from Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

On the left is Quello, who was perceived to be second in command.  He was tall and thin.
Front and center was Wendell, the chief chef (I love alliteration) if you will.
And to the right the youngest of the group, the short and stocky Bob.

They took their brand of cereal to the nation and while initially humble and selling the brand for it's two grain whole wheat cereal with tastes of cinnamon mixed it, America wanted more.

Quello, Wendell, and Bob became National Celebrities in 1985 when they appeared on a commercial baking their special brand of cinnamon toasted bites in cereal for a young mother on a weekday morning.

Entire families loved the way it tasted as it brought America closer together.

The cereal became a hit and the three amicable bakers celebrated among themselves by embracing their friendship and their brand.

Unfortunately two of the bakers didn't take to the audience and soon corporate greed cut ties with them and made only one of them stay in the spotlight.

Wendell became the face of the franchise and marketing campaign.  It appeared that the fame got to Wendell as he made himself the celebrity that the other two bakers couldn't keep up with.

By the early 1990s, only Wendell would appear on TV and became a leader of General Mills famous mascots.

The above group picture features some of the more famous General Mills mascots as pictured in the 90s.  It included Lucky, Wendell, Count Chocula, BuzzBee, Cukoo, Trix Rabbit, and Chip the Dog (Cooooooooookie Crisp).  This lineup only features the General Mills roster and none of their fiercest rivals, the Gang of Kellogg's.  Toucan Sam, Dig 'Em, Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle, Pop, and the like could know what happened to Wendell's other baking friends, but we know that Wendell is at least still around at the time of this "photo".

It was shortly after this photo that Wendell went missing and was replaced by something that can only be described as a sentient cereal.

It appears that the cereal that Wendell was producing using a bunch of artificial sweetners after his closest friends Quello and Bob disbanded somehow mutated the cereal into a cannibalistic killing cereal.

Could this have killed Wendell in the process?

Are Quello and Bob still around?


Come join me sleuths and let's look at what we know so far on how to tame these cannibal killing sweet sugary cereal cinnamon goodness.

We have a 2013 Topps Chrome Refractor of Andrew McCutchen.  Seems harmless and unimportant for our mystery of three missing bakers, right?  The potential clue is on the back.

We learn that Cutch enjoys eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch "right out of the napkin".

Whenever we see the cereal come alive it is in milk.

Could the secret to calming these cannibal cinnamon squares be in consuming them dry?

Did this 2013 Topps Chrome baseball card hide a secret clue to what may have happened to the other famous bakers of this once extremely popular cereal?

I will leave you to decide...

Next year I will explain (not really) the history of Fruit Brute, the forgotten "Monster" cereal.

Let's finish with a scene from Burying the Ex that features Alexandra Daddario's character selling Fruit Brute at her local ice cream and shake horror shop.

We may never know what became of Wendell and the other two bakers.  Honestly though, it's not worth looking into either.

Enjoy Your Cereal Today on National Cereal Day!!!!

Heritage Comparisons pt3: Clemente v Cutch

Over the years, Topps has used Heritage to bring the current stars of the game on designs from the past.

Cutch has appeared using the same numbering as Pirates Legend Roberto Clemente a handful of times.

I want to preface these segments and state that I do not believe that a single season of Cutch can take away from the greatness of Roberto Clemente's life or his baseball career.

Each of these Heritage comparisons will take a look at a card of Cutch and compare it to the design's original numbered card.

The 2016 Heritage card release is based on the 1967 design.

Cutch's 2016 Heritage card is numbered 400 the same as Pirates Legend and Hall of Famer, Roberto Clemente.

The back of Cutch's card even mentions The Great One, Roberto Clemente.

As will be customary for these Heritage Comparisons I will take a look at the standard counting stats typically found on the back of a baseball card for the players previous year.

Slash Lines
Clemente in 1966 went .317/.360/.536 for an .896 OPS
Cutch in 2015 went .292/.401/.488 for an .889OPS
slight Advantage Clemente

Plate Discipline
Clemente had His worse K:BB rate 2.37 (109:46) during his MVP season in 1966
Cutch's fourth consecutive top 5 MVP finish season showed some regressionwhen he had 1.35 K:BB (133:98)
Advantage Cutch

Extra Base Hits (XBH)
Clemente had 31 doubles, 11 triples, and 29 HR in 1966
Cutch had 36 doubles, 3 triples, and 23 round trippers
71 v 62
Advantage Clemente

Runs Scored and Runs Batted In
Runs scored and RBI are based on who hits in front of you and who hits behind you.
Clemente scored 105 runs and drove in 119 in 1966.
Cutch scored 91 runs and knocked in 96
Advantage Clemente

Hardware and awards
Clemente won his only MVP, 6th straight Gold Glove, and was elected an All-Star
Cutch was a top 5 MVP, his 4th straight Silver Slugger, and was elected an All-Star
Advantage Clemente


I hope you enjoyed the comparisons made based on the Heritage card and original design numbering.  I will continue to do these segments if there is enough interest in them.

As I have done in my previous Heritage Comparisons I will show off all the other parallels I have of Cutch's Heritage card I am spotlighting.

Up first are the red back and gum stain back

Now for the chromes

I need the Superfractor 1/1, Gold /5, and Refractor

4 more parallels added

With the release of Archives, Bunt, Inception, Series 2, and Museum all in the past month I am getting very close to 1,800 unique cards of Cutch.

In addition to all the recent card releases, 3 previous collectors of Cutch are beginning to sell off their collections so I have been able to add some nice cards to the collection in the past month also.  

Here's my latest group of cards I purchased.

4 new parallels, none of which are super rare.

A pair of Heritage Chrome refractors, a die cut Bowman Chrome insert and a Blue parallel for Topps Museum.

With this cardboard quatro added to the collection, I now sit at 1,760 cards (with more incoming).  When I began to collect cards again late in 2009 I never thought I would be approaching this many unique cards of my favorite player for the next decade.  This has been such a fun joy trying to track down as many of his cards as possible.

Flava Flav!!!! Cross off these 2 rookies!

I have been adding some of the harder to find early Cutch cards to my collection recently.

To make a pun of the collection this year, it's been a bit of a Cutch22 (catch 22) adding the cards.  Because of Cutch's near Mendoza level batting average (.213 entering today) his card prices have dropped substantially over the past year.  This is good for adding cardboard of my favorite athlete of the past decade.  It's bad because well....he's my favorite athlete of the past decade.

Recently two of his more expensive rookie cards 2009 Bowman Sterling were ending around the same time.  The price on the refractor has typically been in the $25-$35 range since 2012.  The gold refractor (/50) has been in the $50+ range since that time.

I managed to grab both the refractor and gold for $25.

Reading the back of this card made me laugh.

Thanks for everyone who entered my Top 10 contest.  There is still some time to enter!
Remember the top prize is a Craig Biggio Topps Dynasty autograph patch card.

Subtle differences

As is often the case Topps intentionally creates variations on their Heritage line each year.

Some are a throwback to the original.
Some are a product of drawing interest for their case breakers.

This year there are various backs you can get.

Bright yellow is one of them.

The scan really shows the bold and vibrant "Bright Yellow" variant much better than the naked eye.  As a matter of fact I even sent the seller a message asking if they really sent the right card.

In addition to those, I also have a few other Heritage variants.

The blue border, color swap logo, and base are on the top row.
The base chrome, refractor chrome, and blue border chrome are on the bottom.

The Color Swap variant has a yellow back.

In addition to those variants there is also a Flip Stock variant.  These are very cool, but very difficult to spot in a top loader.  The flip stock is exactly what it sounds like.  The stock on the cards have been flipped.  The front is a rougher stock similar to a matte finish.  The back is a smooth glossy finish.

The left is the base.  The right is flip stock.

I have some more Heritage rolling in soon.  A couple relics and an insanely rare Case Hit!

Chrome Surfboards

I forgot who dubbed 2012 Topps as the surfboard set, but ever since reading that I have associated that name with 2012.

I just picked up my 7th parallel of 2012 Topps Chrome card #38, Andrew McCutchen.

Cutch was a first time All-Star in 2011, but as you can tell by the stats on the back started to fall apart in the second half.  He finished the season with his worse average .259.

I still need the Superfractor, Black, Gold, Red, and Atomic.  If anyone comes across any please let me know.  I realize these are all hard to come by.